by William Aarnes
No one looks twice at a sparrow or squirrel . . .
but a peregrine falcon or mountain lion is a
lifetime experience. –Edward O. Wilson
Just yesterday morning Jack was reading on the deck
when what well might be the fourth
perched itself on the lowest limb of the nearby oak
and interrupted with “a strain
of invective that was irresistible.”
Two years ago the third startled him–having slipped
off a branch thirty feet above, it plopped
one stride ahead of him and lay splashed–
though, quick as a sidestep, a spasm
thrashed it back on its feet.
The second
surprised him in the fall of 1969
in Lafayette Square when it darted out of the way
by climbing his trousers
up to his thigh.
And the fall he was four
the first so frightened him by lying stiff
and half buried in the wet leaves of a gutter
that he jerked free from his mother’s hand
and dashed halfway across the honking street.
